Twitter Thursday

This week I chose to follow @SmartBitches. This twitter account belongs to Sarah Wendell, one of the founders and current headmistress of the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog. The tag line is "All of the Romance, none of the bullshit." That should give you an inkling of what the tone of the blog is like.

I found out about the Smart Bitches via word of mouth. I believe it was BEA 2007 and I went with a friend who I met through Bookstore. She was working in a public library by this time and she introduced me to some wonderful ladies she'd met through her job. We were all hanging out on the lower level of Javits, waiting for the show to open. We'd gotten there early to snag tickets for the 'big' signings.  When N and I discovered we shared a mutual love of romance, the recs flew fast and furious. Then she said, "Do you know the Smart Bitches blog?"  I believe I was a little hesitant at first, but she made it sound so fabulous, I googled it when I recovered from the BEA daze. Now it's one of my daily sites.

This is not a serious blog. No, this is a blog that offers a tongue-in-cheek perspective on romance-related issues, topped with a hefty dose of snark. One of their regular features is Caption that Cover. The person who comes up with the snarkiest & funniest caption wins and Sarah usually has a prize for them. There's also Help a Bitch out (someone's looking for the book, but all they remember is the plot) and Friday videos (a humorous or touching you-tube vid). Sarah does cover industry-related issues, but they tend to be strictly romance related (Judith Griggs debacle aside) and from a layman's perspective. She also uses quite a bit of colorful language so it may not be work-safe, strictly speaking. Her professional website, Smart Bitch Sarah, is more, y'know, professional, but it's a good reference for Sarah's appearances & publications. Her professional website is, like, her day job, and the Smart Bitches blog is Sarah kicking off her heels & curling up on the couch with a glass of wine for a good gossip. Her twitter is snippets from that conversation.


The tone of her twitter is very true to who Sarah appears to be. Sarah shares glimpses into her personal life, talks about the book she just finished reading and what she's writing now. She doesn't tweet much about industry happenings unless she gets excited or riled up. I've "met" Sarah twice now. Once was at BEA 2009 when she signed my copy of Beyond Heaving Bosoms (an academic look at romance that's not very academic. With man titty). The second time was at RomCon 2010 where I was bold enough to ask if I could sit at her table at what turned out to be a rather bad panel. Jane from Dear Author was there as well and I was an absolute stuttering idiot from intimidation. Sarah basically told me I was crazy and then did her best to put me at ease. Her twitter account sounds exactly like she does.


I leave up to you to decide whether @SmartBitches sounds follow-worthy or not, but I'd put her squarely in the entertainment category.

Twitter Thursday

I've re-written this entry about four times. Perhaps it's my setting (my desk in the library), but the first paragraph keeps coming out like an introduction to an academic paper. So I'm going to skip it entirely and dive right into Twitter Thursday. There's no twitter account set up for the blog yet, but I do have a personal account where I follow a couple of book people. My intention is to feature one twitter account that you should be following. 

I am going to start with one of my top favorite authors: @NaliniSingh. I vividly remember how my love affair with her books began.  I remembered reading a review of it in Romantic Times (a magazine I found at my first Bookstore & subscribed to three months) and while I wasn't wowed by the description, I added it to my TBR journal. A week or two later, I got an excerpt of Slave to Sensation via Ms. Singh's publicist in the mail. Since I recognized the title, I read it right away. Then I proceeded to write a gushing email to the publicist and haunted the stockroom until the book came in.

Ever since then, I was hooked.  I was fortunate enough to receive ARCs for Visions of Heat and Caressed by Ice. I wrote up a review of Visions of Heat that was featured on Bookstore's internal romance newsletter. One of the final lines read: "This is definitely her breakout series and Ms. Singh will soon be one of the romance heavy-hitters." As we know now,  Ms. Singh has gone to be a New York Times bestselling author and an auto-buy for paranormal readers.

I was fortunate enough to meet Ms. Singh at RomCon2010. She actually is the main reason I went since she is based in New Zealand and rarely comes to the States for signings. We had a few email exchanges prior to this, back in 2006 & 2007, and not much contact since then until I begged (like full on groveling) for an ARC of Bonds of Justice. I expected to be one of the crowd, but she knew who I was. She remembered my reviews. I was speechless. She is incredibly nice and very warm towards her fans (I was by no means the only fangirl there).

Her Twitter account is worth following for the following reasons:

1. She rarely tweets unless it's book-related so your feed will not be cluttered with extraneous information. Ms. Singh has a blog of her own where she talks about her work in general and occasionally shares tidbits from her personal life. She is also a weekly poster at The Odd Shots, where she will sometimes make book recommendations or post some of her photographs (which are gorgeous).
2. When they release an excerpt or cover blurb, Ms. Singh tweets a link, thereby circumventing the need to continually check her website and allowing for instant gratification. She also sends out reminders about publication dates.
3. Ms. Singh checks her feed on a daily basis. She may answer fan questions or send out smiley faces. I skimmed her feed while writing this entry and now I know that Max's brother, River, will be a presence in Kiss of Snow. 

So, when you're finished with your turkey dinners (Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Americans!),  log into Twitter and follow @NaliniSingh.  I personally will probably be in bed, hiding under the covers, because tomorrow is Black Friday. It's bad enough working Black Friday, but considering Hanukkah will only be a week away? I'd rather be home reading!